The objective of this study was to analyze the risk of occurrence of water deficit for periods of ten days in the southern half of the Rio Grande do Sul State. Daily meteorological data were obtained from nine localities, distributed over the five ecoclimatic regions (Campanha, Depressão Central, Grandes Lagoas, Litoral and Serra do Sudeste) of the southern half of the state, during the period of 1961 - 1990. Ten days intervals water balances were computed, using the Thornthwaite-Mather method, with a soil water storage capacity of 50 and 125 mm. From these computations, the ten days water index (IH = ETR/ETo) was obtained. In order to verify the risk of occurring a water deficit, the value of 0.6 was adopted as critical value. Analysis of the results show that the Campanha region has the largest probability of occurrence of water deficit in a ten days period, mainly in the period between 2nd ten days of December to 2nd ten days of January.
water balance; water index; real evapotranspiration; potential evapotranspiration
